The last few years have been challenging for hospitals and health systems across the U.S., especially smaller regional systems and independent hospitals. But now many C-suite leaders are setting their sights on growth again.
"We had a really rough time the last couple of years, but saw a big turnaround last year," said Bill Pack, CFO of Conway (Ark.) Regional Health System during a panel at the Becker's 14th Annual Meeting. "A big piece of that is we have a very comprehensive payer strategy and last year we went out of network with one of the big payers in the state. We were the first and since then four other large systems in the state have gone out of network as well."
Arkansas has one of the lowest paid rates from government payers, and private payers are not much better, said Mr. Pack.
"We rank 50th and not proud of it," said Mr. Pack. "That makes it a little bit tougher when we are fighting inflation and we have our costs going up, and our reimbursement is either flat or declining."
To make ends meet, Conway Regional operated essentially without a capital budget for the last few years and identified opportunities to lower costs in operations.
"It's been fix things as they break, replace things as they break," Mr. Pack said. "We're finally in a place where we can start to develop a new capital plan and a longer range capital plan for replacing equipment and upgrading facilities and doing all the things that we've unfortunately had to put off the last few years."
Mr. Pack has also begun to focus on strategic planning with his team and identifying partners who can grow with them.
"We're now at the point where we actually can do some longer range planning and not have to worry day-to-day about what bills we're going to pay and whether or not we're going to have to touch our reserves, which we have not had to do," said Mr. Pack. "That's really good and better than many hospitals in Arkansas, because most are still having a really rough time."